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About Me

I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Infantry Magazine, Military Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles. See "Published Works" on the web version for citations.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
Another archived site is here.
It replaces the ".com" with ".ws".
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

Monday, July 04, 2016

It's Like We Aren't Even Trying to Win in Syria

On the heels of this embarrassing defeat in eastern Syria by "our" local forces, we have another defeat in northwest Syria to chew on.

Syria's al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front has abducted the commander of the Western-backed Jaish al-Tahrir brigade, along with several of his aides and scores of fighters in coordinated raids in northern Syria, Jaish al Tahrir said on Sunday.

Jaish al Tahrir was set up in February as part of an effort to forge unity among moderate rebels in the Free Syrian Army (FSA) alliance at a time when a major Islamic State advance threatened their main stronghold near the Turkish border.

In another blow to the U.S. effort to train and equip "moderate" Syrian rebels, the surprise attack by ISIS inflicted a defeat on New Syrian Army effort to take the town of al-Boukamal, just across the border from the Iraqi town of al-Qaim. The New Syrian Army forces retreated and reportedly were regrouping in the desert.

Muzahem al Saloum, a spokesman for the New Syrian Army, told Reuters, "We have withdrawn to the outlying desert and the first stage of the campaign has ended."

"The news is not good," another rebel source told Reuters. "I can say our troops were trapped and suffered many casualties and several fighters were captured and even weapons were taken."

All other known attempts to train rebel groups have largely failed, in part because of Washington’s focus on the fight against IS rather than toppling the Syrian government, and its failure to protect its partners from better-equipped rivals.

I'm not the only one to note this, but I have mentioned this error more than once in the past.

Fighting and dying to fight ISIL for America just isn't the motivation we need to keep Syrian men fighting when the going gets rough. Syrians outraged by Assad's minority regime, who took up arms to defeat him, just don't have their heart in a fight to defeat ISIL--which, despite its evil nature, is at least trying to defeat Assad and has had the most success in that objective.

And it is worse because we want the rebels we support to fight and die not to eventually defeat Assad after the ISIL side trip, but to pressure Assad into negotiations to end the war short of Assad's total defeat!

Which is why I've always wanted to focus on defeating ISIL in Iraq while also working for the overthrow of Assad in Syria despite the strong position of ISIL in Syria.

If we defeat Assad first--which inspires the majority of Syrians the way fighting ISIL does not--we can persuade people in and out of Syria to fight ISIL in the next stage of the war.

If we defeat ISIL first, our European allies will be eager to end the war to stop migrants from flowing to Europe even if the price is Assad's survival and eventual victory.

We should just combine the FSA and NSA into the NFSA (Non-Fighting Syrian Army) and at least save on administrative costs. I mean, if we aren't trying to shape the outcome of the Syrian Civil War to get some type of victory, no matter how imperfect, we might as well save a bit of cash while we ultimately lose.

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Note on site statistics: When I strip out the junk hits from Blogger statistics that seem to come and go in waves, I appear to have about 10,000 hits per month.

My old statistics package, Site Meter, seems to miss a lot and even disappears visits after they've appeared.

I just added a new StatCounter. So far it shows far fewer hits than Blogger and is more in line with Site Meter. But I suspect neither of the non-Blogger statistics register hits from social media. So I'm not sure what my audience size is. It is puzzling to me.

Of course, it is quite possible that my failure to use Facebook and Twitter has handicapped me in getting an audience. Or it may be an additional issue. I may be a blogosaur!